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Joystiq hands-on: HP's mscape
HP showed off several of its gaming research and development projects at a recent San Francisco media event. The company said that many of these technologies had been in progress before the VoodooPC acquisition, but Rahul Sood and other VoodooPC leaders were able to see the gaming applications of previous research.I spent some time trying mscape ("mediascape") and discussing the project with some of its engineers. This gaming platform -- which isn't meant to compete with a hardware-and-software solution like the DS or PSP -- has already been used in the real world, unlike most of the in-progress projects demonstrated.Mscape sits on a PocketPC or other device, presenting an augmented reality game space. Other game designers and companies have tried to bridge the virtual world and the real world, with games that are played on devices by moving around outside. But HP's muscle may eventually help push these new experiences to mainstream gamers.
HP wants to bridge PCs and consoles behind the scenes
HP described how its consumption of VoodooPC has impacted both companies at a media event this week. Shane Robison, an HP VP, said that one of the biggest effects is that HP now has "Voodoo DNA" pumping through its hallways, we think like a virus affecting a host. Should the injection become a problem, HP may someday page Dr. Mario to sort things out; Rahul Sood, CTO of the HP gaming group and founder of VoodooPC, repeatedly said that HP wants to complement consoles and not be a competitor.HP, however, offered few specific plans to bring PCs and consoles closer together from a gamer's perspective. Instead, the company showed a series of game technology demos that may someday be licensed to console makers, generating more income from its annual $3.5 billion research and development budget. One of those projects, mscape, has been called a handheld challenger in other stories, but HP executives told us that it's a platform that runs on certain PocketPCs and other devices; HP doesn't plan to ship an all-in-one hardware-and-software version of the augmented reality gaming tool.HP will continue pushing its computers to gamers, keeping the VoodooPC brand at the top of its price/performance tier, while introducing a new line of PCs that fits between the gap between that ultra-high end and HP's standard machines.
HP reveals GPS-infused, Wii-inspired handheld tech
"We want to get kids off the couch," Rahul Sood, chief technology officer of HP's gaming division, said during a presentation on their new Mscape technology. Their handheld technology takes advantage of GPS navigation and accelerometers, similar to the ones found in Nintendo Wii. The basic premise is to allow players to actively play in real environments, such as a park. CNET's Tom Krazit explains: "The early concept involves a handheld and a series of small sensors that a game organizer could lay out around a city or park. Those sensors would trigger certain events in the game, like a bonus level or an attack by the bad guys, based on a small demonstration of the concept here."While HP will most likely avoid actually manufacturing a console to compete against Sony and Nintendo, the technology is certainly intriguing. Will Sony or Nintendo's next portable feature this inspiring Mscape tech? Or will a new portable from Microsoft or Dell take advantage of it?
HP shows off some future-gen gaming tech
So we hit up HP's Gaming Summit which, as it turned out, only seemed peripherally related to gaming besides the announcement of an unnamed mid-to-high end gaming brand this year. Still, their R&D labs were happy to drag some old favorites out of the vault -- like the Misto touchscreen-based coffee table -- as well as show of some hitherto unseen technologies, such as:Pluribus - Our favorite: use a camera (for alignment) and as many off-the-shelf projectors as you want to make a scalable, massive, composite-projected screen. Users can choose software assisted alignments that result in resolution, redundancy, enhanced brightness, or combinations therein. In the 12 projector demo we saw, a 15-foot composite display which was almost totally unaffected by someone walking through it. (Check out this slide to get a general idea as to how it works. Forgive us, HP, for our crude mockup.)Panoply - Kind of the same take as Pluribus, but for an immersive game or theater environment. Use software alignment techniques with a camera to line up two off-the-shelf projectors without having to go through the pain of setting up a complicated wraparound display.mscape - Another project Voodoo's Sood discussed was mscape, a new mobile gaming and media entertainment platform in development to take advantage of augmented reality, movement, biometrics, GPS, and so, so many other buzzwords. Seems pie in the sky, but we'd like to see what happens if they launch.Interested? Check out the gallery.%Gallery-2444%
